An Iowa City man will spend the next 15 years in federal prison for receiving child pornography. Kevin Emmett Toomey, age 70, was sentenced on July 19 to 180 months in prison and was also ordered to serve 10 years of supervised release following his prison sentence. He was assessed a special assessment immediately payable to the Crime Victims Fund.

Toomey pleaded guilty in February 2022 to this offense. Law enforcement officers received a cybertip in March 2020 alerting them to an email address that had uploaded suspected child pornography. Detectives obtained and executed a search warrant at Toomey’s residence and seized several electronic devices. A forensic examination of the devices revealed over 4,000 images and nearly 300 videos depicting child pornography. Toomey began accessing child pornography shortly after his release from prison for a prior federal child pornography conviction and continued until the time of his arrest in 2020.

U.S. Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The case was investigated by the Iowa City Police Department and the Joint Forensic Analysis Cyber Team. It was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Childhood” initiative, which was started in 2006 as a nationwide effort to combine law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, community action and public awareness to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation of children.

Anyone having knowledge of a child being sexually abused is encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-284-7821.